The Mystery of the Missing Berkshire Hathaway Invite

Meyer Shields knows what it’s like to not get invited to a party.

As Berkshire Hathaway investors, executives, and analysts whooped it up at cocktail receptions and Gorat’s Steak House in Omaha this past weekend, the veteran analyst watched the annual meeting alone from more than 1,100 miles away at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland.

盾牌 - 带有Keefe，Bruyette＆Woods的保险业专家 - 再次被要求在CEO Warren Buffett或副主席Charlie Munger担任伯克希尔爱菲斯特的副主席。通过盾牌的数量，他是最长的职业卖方经纪经纪经纪经纪经纪经纪公司，而不是如此邀请。

“我们参加伯克郡的年会的邀请似乎再次在邮件中丢失，”加拿大出生的董事总经理上周剥夺了一个研究说明。

因此，星期六，它是杰克拉迪的分析师Jay Gelb，他询问了一些友好的记者和投资者的乐趣。

One possible reason for Berkshire to shun Shields: the man has never, ever recommended the stock since he began covering it in October, 2009.

Shields says a frequent annual meeting attendee told him that his name has been floated to participate in the past, but rejected — reasons unknown. He was initially taken aback by the notion that Buffett would freeze him out. “It surprised me at first,” he says in an interview. “His reputation was that he was someone who welcomed tough questions.”

在电子邮件中，巴菲特的助理黛比博斯纳表示，伯克希尔一直在使用相同的分析师和记者。“在一点上，我们有三个保险分析师旋转，但是一个不再是分析师，所以我们在剩下的两个保险分析师之间旋转，”她写道。“我们没有添加任何新的。”

盾牌出版了原创的，坚硬的研究，提出了一种使CEO在衣领下热的主题。例如，盾牌认为，伯克郡拥有26.7次赌注的牛皮制亨利斯的主要定价问题，并与巴西投资公司3G首都召开了Quancet Buallyhoo的联盟。“对3G合作伙伴关系有很多热情，”盾牌说。

He slams Berkshire’s increasingly skimpy financial disclosures for its individual business and insurance lines compared to that of rivals. “Progressive gives us information every month and doesn’t seem to suffer for it,” he notes.

Most controversial: Shields’ call last week for Buffett to consider abandoning stock picking in favor of passive indexing, a veritable heresy to those who worship at the feet of the master asset allocator.

盾牌做了很多家庭作业来抵达这个建议。他筛选了近20年的伯克郡的月度股票投资组合控股，以计算企业股权的准确估计在不同的时间跨度。最后，投资组合价值20.9亿美元。伯克希尔的控股大幅优势在2009年的10年内大幅优势，以截至累计119％击败基准，盾牌计算。然而，从2019年3月31日到2009年3月31日，投资组合持有谦虚地表现得其约12.9％。

Accordingly, Shields suggests that Buffett — who has long championed index funds for most investors — consider taking his own advice. The analyst is quick to add that he has “no expectation that it will ever happen.”

盾牌，47，是一名资深保险手。开始作为少年，他沉浸在业界的复杂机器中。盾牌毕业于多伦多大学，在他的家乡，在精算科学中有一个学士学位。他的第一份工作与马里兰州保险行政管理有关，他从苏黎世保险集团的一系列精算职位转移到，然后在Legg Mason作为一个分析师的华尔街。盾牌在2009年踢出了他的伯克希尔覆盖率，经过臭氧金融购买Legg Mason的资本市场业务。然后Stifel买了Keefe，Bruyette＆Woods，盾牌很快就转移到金融服务精品店。

说:“世界正在发生变化hields. Technology is transforming investment dogma — witness last week’s bombshell from Buffett that Berkshire owned a stake in Amazon.com, although he emphasized that one of his younger lieutenants were responsible. “We’re at a stage where technology companies, and Amazon is one of them, are doing very real things in the real world. You can’t ignore them,” says Shields.

被动投资策略是用转化进行擒抱的一种方式，提供了自动暴露于一个可能完全理解的部门。但索引可能会产生并发症。

“这是不实际的，”普林斯顿大学教授伯顿Malkiel说：A Random Walk Down Wall Street, the seminal tome about the difficulties of outperforming the stock market. “A lot of the holdings of Berkshire Hathaway have considerable embedded capital gains.”

Example: The tax basis for Berkshire’s 17.9 percent stake in American Express was $1.3 billion. The market value as of the end of 2018: $14.5 billion. Such embedded gains are akin to a long-term loan from the government. Taxes must theoretically — eventually — be paid. In the meantime, though, they pay out growing dividends on the “borrowed” money invested. Famously, Buffett has said that his favorite holding period is forever.

倾倒大职位去被动需要其他潜在的抵押品损坏。“当你移动大量的库存时，你有市场影响成本，”马尔齐尔说。

Carol Loomis, the storied former幸运magazine writer, put forward to Buffett a related suggestion on Saturday at the annual meeting. Why wouldn’t he invest the cash Berkshire holds in stock indexes, she asked, until he finds a ripe acquisition? Buffett’s response: “It may well make sense in the future.”

Plenty of investors take issue with Shields’ indexing proposal. The last ten or so years following the financial crisis may be a poor time frame through which to judge the performance of Berkshire’s concentrated portfolio. There has not been a proper bear market in that span, says William Smead, chief investment officer of Smead Capital Management. “That will come back over the next ten years,” he says.

巴菲特的股票采摘是以胜利为本的，是过去十年的大部分地区出于时尚的反周期风格，是俄亥俄州州立大学的金融教授陆张教授指出。“十年太短暂，建议巴菲特应该改变他的战略，”张说。“在长期来看，伯克希尔已经击败了任何指数，任何指数，递减。”

For his part, Shields reiterates that he doesn’t expect Buffett to heed his suggestion, and that he finds plenty of positive takeaways from the annual meeting, even from afar. “He has all his marbles,” he says of Buffett. “And Charlie does too.”

And, no, Shields isn’t holding his breath for an invite next year.